Some thoughts on healthy food

The first Challenge is coming to an end and I am even more prepared now for Challenge 2.

Challenge 2 Details:

Monday June 1-August 22

SIGN UP BY WEDNESDAY, MAY 27th

12 weeks long

16 cheats (make your coupons)

Take a before picture

Check your weight before it begins

Take your inches (waist, hips, chest, arms)

Record your current size of clothing

No fried foods

No sweets

Only 12 ounces of soda per day

Exercise 3-6 times a week

We will only weigh in every 2 weeks

(you will email info on Fridays instead)

Email me the following: 

(tctummy@yahoo.com)

Name

12 week "pound" goal

(That is all I need to know this time. I have all the rest. You need to keep up with your weight, 

inches and all that because we will be seeing how those change)

WEIGH IN DATES 

(every 2 weeks on Fridays)

June 12

June 26

July 10

July 24

Aug 7

Aug 21

Email Tanna if you want to participate. You must email her by tomorrow. This was the first time in a long time that I have started and finished a weight loss program/diet of some sort. You should join even if you just have 5 pounds to lose! The motivation is awesome that the group provides!! 

Now .. some random information that has helped me to eat better. The School of Public Health and my Principles in Public Health class have forever made me think differently about food! 

1. Food that is good for you does not always taste good the first time. Try different veggies at least 3 different times before you decide that you don't like it. You can grill veggies, mash them, season them, boil them .. your options are endless. I have eaten butternut squash, eggplant, celery, and chickpeas all things that I have said "I do not like." They taste good actually.
2. Mix up your salad! Just eating a plain salad with lettuce will get boring, add avocado, celery, carrots, broccoli, chick peas, salsa, you name it you can add it to your salad!
3. Beef is not always a good choice. Make sure you know how your cows are being fed!!!!!!
4. There are other ways to fix your sweet tooth. Cantaloupe, frozen banana slices, oranges, apples, grapes. Limit the processed sweets in your diet.
5. Pesticides are not good for our bodies and are often alllll over the fruits and veggies we buy at the store. If possible by local from a nearby farmers market! 

Chartwells recently made a move in March to include more grass-fed beef into the dining halls.But wait, don't all cows eat grass? Well, they're supposed to. An overwhelming number of farms in the U.S. use confined feed lots, or concentrated animal feeding operations, to raise their livestock. The big fuss about grass-fed or free-range meat is that "it's not about how the animal dies, but how it lives," said University at Albany biology professor Gary Kleppel. Cows and sheep are supposed to have a diet of grass and other things like weeds that are typically found on open ranges and fields. In the feed lots, livestock are kept in cement confines, sometimes with more than 1000 other animals. These thousand-plus animals are force fed corn. Corn has a large amount of protein and fat, so it gets the cows really big really quickly. It is also a cheap and abundant resource. It seems fine, right? But, because of their specialized stomachs, called rumen, cows and sheep cannot process corn. Corn turns livestock with rumen's, which are normally neutral, acidic. This acidity leads to the cows getting sick. "Imagine having acid indigestion all the time," said Kleppel. "Giving cows corn is like putting diesel in a gasoline powered car," said Bill Kurtis, author of "The Prairie Table Cookbook." "It's wrong, wrong, wrong." According to sustainable.org, a website devoted to environmental sustainability, about 12 to 32 percent of all feed lot cattle develop liver abscesses as a result of a high-grain diet. In order to combat the various sicknesses, farmers then pump their livestock full of antibiotics. "Switching a cow from grass to grain opens the floodgates to a host of serious maladies," wrote Star Ledger reporter Beth D'Addono, "which only a constant diet of antibiotics can begin to counter. "It has also been reported that farmers also inject hormones into the cows. "It makes them grow quickly and hold a lot of water so they weigh more," said Kleppel.

The rest of the information can be found here or http://media.www.albanystudentpress.org/media/storage/paper1019/news/2008/04/28/News/Beef-and.Antibiotics.And.Hormones.Its.Whats.For.Dinner-3359116.shtml.

So, I am in a learning process of beginning to eat better for my body and trying new foods prepared different ways. My body feels better, I have lost weight, and I have more energy!!